written by: Ben Cowie—I write about my experiences as a scientist, teacher, learner and human being. The views expressed on this blog are my own.

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When you strike out three times in one game …

To continue with Peter Newbury’s (@polarisdotca) baseball analogy week, when you’re playing baseball, and have struck out three times in one game – you go up to bat the next time even more determined to get on base. This mentality is one of the reasons I think baseball players make good scientists – when you’re working in the lab, sometimes your procedures don’t work – again, and again, and again. Determination to get a result is sometimes all that matters.

Sometimes in the lab it’s faulty equipment. Sometimes the reagents have expired. Sometimes you don’t know what happened and have to go back and troubleshoot. After doing my DNA extractions and PCR reactions last month, my positive controls have DNA, my negative controls are free of DNA (both good things) and my Agar Gels seem to look clean of any problems. Unfortunately, my real samples aren’t showing any bands of DNA anywhere. Possibly there isn’t much DNA in the samples to begin with (they’re methanogens after all, low-biomass communities), or the oil in the samples interferes with the extraction process. Either way, I’m starting from scratch this week to get results, and not giving up – the geochem and isotope data look great in this experiment, and having some proper DNA sequencing will be the Mariano Rivera (or Tom Henke, if you prefer) of this study – providing the last bit of evidence to close out a really great story.

Baseball is life. Life is baseball. Particularly true in science, these analogies never seem to end.

One thought on “When you strike out three times in one game …”

Happy to pitch one in there for you to get ahold of, Ben! It’s so easy to get into a slump and seriously doubt you know what you’re doing, or that the equipment is somehow conspiring against you. Congratulations for getting back in the batter’s box. And for the pep talk for everyone else whose average is dropping.